Part time Entrepreneur, fulltime Employee
I’ve recently uploaded an article on the Gridspy blog that I would like to share with you about the difficulties of founding a start-up part time.
Part Time Entrepreneur, Full-time Employee
Most startups seem to embrace 60-80 hour weeks, you keep reading about them and begin to believe that this is normal. After 12 hour marathon coding sessions ‘typical entrepreneurs’ walk 10 metres from desk to bed and collapse in their shared accommodations. Living in such lean conditions makes those crucial first months of business far cheaper. This work ethic and minimial living costs maximises the runway before the seed money runs out.
Paul Graham is one of my favourite bloggers, and his essay entitled The Other Road Ahead he paints a clear picture of how lean a start-up can be, stating “You can literally launch your product as three guys sitting in the living room of an apartment, and a server collocated at an ISP. We did.”
No matter how much I’d love to take the lean ramen noodle approach it’s simply not practical for me. I’m a father of two, a husband of one, and an employee. I’ve got a beautiful family with young children, a modest house with a mortgage, and a full-time job to pay the bills. In short, I have a standard existence that I imagine many of my readers share. Living off noodles in a cheap apartment with my co-founders is not the only way that start-ups are built. I’ve taken an alternative route that involves just as much hard graft (harder maybe?) and allows me to remain employed full-time. The food sure is better!
I simply have to fit Gridspy into the gaps between the hours at work outside of the home and the start-up and the time put into fatherhood and being an available partner. It is a compromise position that I have had to maintain for the last year until Gridspy was ready. Along with the mandatory overtime, maintaining a full-time job limits my flexibility. I cannot travel to meet potential clients as easily or pick up the phone to talk to them. It markedly slows down progress. However, without the job there would possibly be no Gridspy, or less so than there is now, as there would be no base to develop from.
Despite my full-time commitments I still consistently work on Gridspy. As I mentioned in Selling the Dream I spend four evenings a week working on Gridspy (3-4 hours each one) plus all of Sunday and manage to make a lot of progress. Sometimes I spend my four hours on a blog entry, sometimes on some firmware or a little bit of Django code. Lately I have been creating the setup process for new users. There is a ton of documentation to do on our website – it all takes so much time.
Since my baseline existence is ‘family-man’ and a full-time job, I have had to pace myself with Gridspy. If I am not careful I will burn myself or my loved ones out (and trust me, we’ve been close at times) so I have to be the tortoise rather than the hare. At least doing a small chunk every night gives me a lot of time to think through technology decisions and plan my development.
Of course Gridspy is all that I want to work on and all that I can think about. This creates constant tension/wishful thinking in wanting to jump in both feet first and get everything up and running now, yesterday! It doesn’t help that this fully dedicated full-time start-up founder is also a widely published expectation.
But there are no savings to live off, and even though the almost three year old in my life would like to live on noodles for a bit, I don’t think I could for long. Being employed isn’t as simple as just turning up to my ‘day job’ and punching keys so I can pay the bills. I want, need, to be a ‘good employee.’ It takes conscious effort to honour my commitment to my employer. I remind myself everyday to focus on the work I do for them and to leave Gridspy at home. I’m sure you can see how after a long day at the office and after the chaos of the early evening with the kids, it can take a while to get down to the business of Gridspy. Sometimes all I want to do is grab a beer and turn on the TV.
I like my job, it has loads of benefits. Not least that I can afford to buy beer and have nice dinners and provide my wife and children with all the comforts of home. I have been given some great introductions to potential business partners through my well connected colleagues. I’ve had a group of fellow engineers to discuss my ideas with and sound out my features. Plus I’ve had lots of free coffee and idle banter around the water cooler to enjoy. The benefits of a stable routine and a reliable injection of cash into our bank account each month are not to be frittered away lightly.
But when it comes to developing my own gig, it is a chicken and egg problem. The sooner I take the leap and go fulltime with Gridspy, the sooner we can complete the features that are preventing us from doing a large scale release. But the moment I take that leap, the clock (and the bank account) starts ticking down. I have an extremely short runway and I worry that I could scuttle this opportunity before it has had a chance to take off.
Reading entrepreneurial blogs such as Paul Graham’s can make you think that you have to go fulltime or give up. I am taking an alternative route. By creating Gridspy part-time I have been able to give it the time and breathing room required to succeed. I’m starting to think that this path is the most courageous since it requires serious commitment to devote all your free time to your startup. In the end, I am sure that my compromises will pay off.
Further reading:
I’d love to hear more about what you are all doing in your valuable free time and how it is going.
Thanks Eben for the chance to share this blog entry.
Keep it up. You’re in the same boat as I, and so I’m pulling for you.
Obviously, committed co-founders can help spread the load. Also, people in our position need a realistic plan. For me, that means launch small and iterate. You never know when you might attract some financing to help grease the wheels. Best of luck.
Wow. This is almost identical to my situation. Glad to know others share my struggle. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and experiences and good luck!
Quit your job when you are making more off your software than all your bills.
Paul Graham, Dave mcclure, Eric ries, and many many more folks share ways for you to figure out the $ value point to make money off your projects. They also talk about your minimal viable product and share from their experiences what they’ve seen and experienced.
In the end you need to make sure your idea is something someone will pay money to use. If things go well you will have a product that pays for itself, and allows you to have a little more freedom to explore other ideas or spend time with family. If things go really well you can consider expanding and eventually growing a company or small firm designing what you want.
Your dedication and perseverance shows you have a good work ethic. Keep an eye on your goal, keep on top of your space, and get to first ship. Validate your product as you learn about marketing and customer development.
Good luck out there!
Thanks Eric.
I’ve already launched my Minimum Viable Product. We haven’t got a shopping flow yet but are already selling devices to those in NZ willing to contact us directly. It won’t be long before we are confident to send our devices abroad.
See http://blog.gridspy.co.nz/2009/10/if-there-is-one-thing.html
The trick now is getting everything polished enough for it to sell itself and ramping up sales.
I feel for you, a friend and I are trying to balance college, jobs, social lifes, and a start up app development company, SGS. Every day I feel my social life slipping further and further away, but I keep going because I know the hard work will pay off in the future.
Interesting post. I am your alter-ego. I am a father of two who took the big plunge.
I do think you hit on a lot of advantages of keeping a full-time job. However, there are two significant disadvantages:
1) You aren’t hungry. You don’t have that terror of not being able to provide for you family to motivate you to work hard. You personally may have enough motivation bot a lot of people don’t. While you have a safe job, the side project will often continue to just be a hobby.
2) Intellectual Property. At my previous job, my employer owned anything I created, whether it was on work time or not. That made it impossible for me to develop anything while I was still at the company.
Anyone considering doing a startup while fully employed needs to carefully read their employee agreement. You could find all your hard going down the drain.
Why would you work for a company that imposes that kind of IP nonsense on you??
Alex Kilpatrick stole the words out of my mouth. Be very careful about non-competition agreements and where your IP rights lie with your employer. The contracts of a lot of software engineering jobs contain verbiage transferring the rights to anything you create while employed to the employer. I assume the author has taken this into consideration, but one should definitely look into their IP situation before embarking on a potential startup project.
Thanks for your concern Alex & Evan – I’ve got a letter from the Founder of my employer stating that everything to do with Gridspy belongs to me. I was very careful to read my employment contract before I went full-time and ensure that this would be possible.
Alex – I agree with the motivation of a hungry family. As soon as it is actually possible I will take the leap. That basically means a few sales each month – shouldn’t be long now!
Right now I am highly motivated simply because I love Gridspy.
Keep it up my friend!
I find myself in quite a similar position as you, and trouble is that I’m still far behind on my “startup” work. So far I struggle between being a better “employee” for my employer who so far has been excellent, and allocating some of my free time to do my “pet” projects.
The way to go I think from now on is clearly define the goals both for the full time work, and your startup, and try to define a mean to achieve these goals.
My take on this is not to leave your full time job, until you manage to allocate enough profit from gridspy than will be equal to about 2 years of wages. It’s hard but that will ring a bell when it happens.
Good luck and all the best to you and the family.
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Hey, Nice going! Wish you all the best for the future.
I don’t totally agree with Alex/Eric N.
I think at the end of the day it drills down to the individual like/dislike to either enjoy the best of both worlds(full time job+having own product) or talking the plunge on going solo.
For me, what Tom has done so far is the ideal way to move. I wouldn’t mind dividends of my sweat paying off, while having a steady income and being able to enjoy all of it with my family.
I am in a very similar situation. Married with two kids, mortgage, working for a software company as an employee, and currently moonlighting whenever I have chance to build that small website/webapp that I have created more than 3 years ago. I am probably closer to “financially getting there” though with that webapp.
What keep me working as an employee are (1) financial stability, although there is still a risk of getting retrenched (2) mate-ship with all the colleagues that I’ve worked with over the last couple of years. Well. I might have to make a decision sometime this year. Maybe.
All the best with your startup
I hope this doesn’t come off wrong – because I don’t have kids nor do I know your specific situation – however I will say this:
Entrepreneurship isn’t about certainties, it’s about risk.
Sure you can mitigate your risk, and ease into it – however, I’ve also seen MANY founders not succeed because they never committed 100% and pulled the trigger.
Things change when your 100% focused.
Your product evolves – you get creative – you figure out how to make money.
The best Entrepreneurs I know take huge risk, and sometimes this means putting yourself in very uncomfortable positions.
As with many things, there are 1000 different ways to succeed – this is just my way.
I will end with this. Congrats for being in the game – your doing it! Most don’t .. for that I have mad respect for you.
Hopefully someday well meet.
Dan
@danmartell
Give me three month’s runway and I’ll pull that trigger. See http://nzangels.com/2009/11/03/gridspy-an-online-realtime-power-monitoring-system/
I have to remind myself constantly that it would be stupid to jump in full-time when all that will do is bankrupt Gridspy before it has a chance.
Perhaps if I was selling a 100% software solution and there was no risk of hardware issues I wouldn’t be so cautious about scaling up too fast.
Amazing! I thought I was the only one in the world doing this. All the best in your project and thanks for the inspiration!
Wonderful read. Your story could be mine. I completely understand all the things you’re saying. I know what it feels like to have two small kids, a job, a mortgage, having to get up at night to feed a baby and dreaming of having your own succesful business. I have been developing my own sites for the last decade, without ever being really succesful (in terms of money). I’ve been working at my own computer from eight in the evening until I can’t keep my eyes open. Almost every night, and many saturdays and sundays. Sometimes in the middle of the night, when I can’t sleep (which happenes quite often…).
Even though the lack of succes is at times wildly dissapointing, especially when seeing friends having good academic careers (a path I could have chosen), and even though I feel tired at almost any moment of any day, I’m not complaining. Not once. I cannot help but go on with the next application, and the next and the next. It’s my dream, and one day I will succeed.
I currently have two things in the pipeline, for which I have the same high hopes again – even though the odds are against me
I hope you do well. Instead of just talking about the things you could do (like many people), you act. And you work long days. You deserve your succes, and I hope you will have your deserved succes one day, hopefully just as me.
Keep it up!
I’ve been down this path many times before. The key is to get “out of the building” and go and talk to your potential customers face to face. You might discover that your site already meets all their needs, you just need to explain or advertise it better.
This process is called “Customer Discovery” – see http://steveblank.com/tag/customer-discovery/
If you spend every evening talking to one more potential customer for 2 weeks, at the end you should have a great idea where you need to focus to succeed. It sounds like you have the determination and work ethic sorted already.
Wow I think this is a really great article!
It resounds with me in an unbelievable way – I am in much of a similar situation.
I think it is a lot easier to venture full-time into something if you only have yourself to think about. But when it comes to having a family and other commitments that decision is incredibly tough. Balancing the different aspects of life is not that simple.
Sure you want your venture / business to make a load of money from the get go, but this is not always the case. I think starting something while you have some form of security and then building it up a bit more slowly can give you a really solid foundation.
Some of the comments here are also really great and I think add a lot of value to guys in our boat.
Thanks again for sharing this.
It really is quite astonishing how many people are in the same boat as me. Thank-you for all your support.
Hey, this is my story as well. Married, two kids, mortgage, and I’m baking my own Gridspy at nights.
Keep it up!
We have been at the exactly same position 4 years ago. Growing a business takes a lot of time and yes you do need to be fulltime x 2. It is time that you have a chat with our family and friends and jump the boat. Have a backup plan for cash, no matter how humble it is. You are going to have to live on the lifeboat for a while after jumping the boat before you reach the treasure island, and that’s what gives you character of a true business leader. A lot of startups had no option to go back to the employment world and that is why they had to stay, fight, and make it work. Consider it part of your personal growth and do it.
I’m in a very similar position as Tom, minus the children though so I do have it slightly easier. I’ve had a few projects on the side for a while and spent my evenings hard at work on them once I got home from work but there could be another solution which isn’t quite as risky as quitting your job but it depends on what you do I guess.
I’m a web designer and decided earlier this month to go freelance. Now I have much more time as I work from home, and over time I will eventually give up all client work and focus purely on my side projects but it’ll take time.
Anyways, just a thought. It is still risky, but much less risky than quitting your job and going full time into your side project.
This is interesting that there are so many folks on here with the same kind of story. I’m one of them. When my wife was pregnant with our first son late last June, I first conceived my business plan and started working like crazy on it. I knew that once the little one joined the world that progress would be much harder to come by.
August rolled around and we had our son and the progress did slow. I find it hard to work as consistently as you describe, and sometimes have to take whole weeks off of the side business just to maintain sanity. However there is definitely benefit to having more time to thoroughly think things through.
I like Paul Graham’s articles and many others, but I have to take what they say with a grain of salt. I’ve targeted “ramen profitability” where my bills are paid via the side gig. If I can get there, then I can get anywhere.
Good luck with gridspy!
I’m in exactly the same boat, minus the kids. I built my disposable email service in my free time. It can be both challenging and rewarding. Right now i’m looking for co-founder for my next project as well as hiring some sub-entry level programmers just to get a few more hands and eyeballs on my code. Good luck with it.
Wow! That’s exactly my story. We are three people, all working part time on a tourist related project.
I share your pain, as a father as well, of trying to settle down and do some real work after a full work day and an evening with the family.
In the end, I feel that the real question I have to ask is: “Am I doing this for my family or only for myself?” That means that if I feel I am losing out on my son’s upbringing or losing connection to my wife, I’m out.
We plan to jump in full time when we have enough revenue to pay for two full time employees. Note that this probably means a pay cut from our regular jobs, but that will be worth it.
Reading Graham and co. I always wondered whether I was chasing a losing battle, not being able to work 12 hour workdays on the project. It is comforting the hear from so many of you out there.
Best of luck to you, and to us all.
> Reading entrepreneurial blogs such as Paul Graham’s can make you think that you have to go fulltime or give up.
I’ve had my business for roughly 5 years. The first two of those years were part-time while I worked a full-time job for someone else; my business was going nowhere fast. Leaving my full-time job was the best thing I’ve ever done.
Currently, I employ 8 employees and am in the process of opening a new office.
When you leave the comfort of employment, your mindset changes: sink or swim. Without this perspective, you might miss the risks you must take for your business to succeed. Always push your comfort level. I think PG says something along these lines.
Good luck
when i first started BuySellAds.com I too was full-time, had just bought an apartment, and was getting married. it was a nights and weekends project for the better part of a year before it made financial sense for me to leave the other startup I was at and pursue it full-time. while the late nights (early mornings toward the end), long weekends, and the startup accompanying my wife and I on our honeymoon (imagine answering support emails for a couple hours a day while on your honeymoon!) were very painful, once the business got to a point where I could work on it full-time it was THAT much more mature and ready to be a full-time thing. Had I been working on it full-time all along, i think that I would have made some critical decisions differently and potentially steered the ship off course. my point in telling a bit about my story here is that you just have to keep at it and keep pushing and not lose momentum.
I think @danmartell makes some great points above. My take, is that even if you are working another full-time job and have family commitments, you can still be 100% laser focused on your project. the time constraints I faced while working on my project nights and weekends forced me to hone in on the stuff that really mattered. It trained me to make quick decisions and to execute the “minimal viable product”.
Keep this project as a hobby. Work a little extra on it in the summer, maybe. Invest your time and money in the wife and kids. If your simple product makes real money it will get cloned by some guy in China who then sells it for $20. If your product is complex you will need support staff that reduce operating margins.
In the software world people who sell tires (consultants) pretend to be Ferrari builders (software developers) all the time. Custom software is a brutal world where small mistakes result in poorly rated products. If you sell integrated solutions (software+hardware) then someone like Panasonic might want to compete with you.
A hardware developer in my country developed parts of the GSM standard. And yet there are zero successful cellphone manufacturing companies here in 2010. Instead we got Ericsson and Nokia in two of our neighboring countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torleiv_Maseng
Inspiring read! And it’s nice to see more people in my own situation.
Good luck with Gridspy!
This is something I have done to get my company up and running. I am not a full time programmer but its something I can offer a client, so I have an idea of what you are going through. You will come to a point when you have to take that jump and it will be very exciting for sure. With software its fairly easy as you can complete the program then do a large scale release and use this to your advantage. You are right though as soon as you decide the go full time thats when the clock ticks and you need to run and not walk. Just make sure the partner is ok with this as they will be hurting also during this time and your child of course.
Hi Tom,
Check out http://micropreneur.com. If you’re still in the product dev phase, you’re only in the first 1/3 of your pain as an entrepreneur. You may want some help with the market and marketing, which the Micropreneur Academy can help out with. Good resources, great folks.
Full disclosure: I’m a member, but not the founder. I get nothing if you join or don’t. It’s a good group and worth the time and money to check it out. Totally fits with your situation.
Your article pretty well articualtes what I am up to with http://hockeybias.com
I enjoyed reading it. Best of luck!
I thought your article was a great read, and its nice to see so many people in the same boat. I too have a full time job while juggling a startup at night+weekends. I think the hardest part for me is to stay focused during the day job and not spending too much time working on the startup (during 9-6). I live in NYC, have a mortgage, a wife, no kids yet. The bills add up and it’s daunting to want to jump ship and go the startup route 100% if you can’t cover your mortgage. I think family comes first, and being able to provide for them overrides any of the allure or ‘take the risk’ aspects of going fulltime.
If i go 100% on my startup and my family life suffers (cant pay mortgage+bills) when/if the startup fizzles out I’m in a much worse position than if it takes 4x as long to launch the startup and get to break-even (including paying my mortgage).
Putting the type of burden on your family and yourself is just not worth the ‘the startup could take off’ type of risk.
My goal is to get to a point where I can safely pay all my bills, mortgage and some decently comfortable lifestyle provided directly from my startup, then switch over full time.
Good luck!
when I started RailsFactory, I had a wife and kid, but no modgages or loans.
Opportunity in most cases is a timeframe during which your idea/product/service is relevant to the marketplace, missing it would make all the effort unrewarding.
Also when you have a safety net you do not try hard. At some point you would need to decide when you want to go fulltime, it is just a question of when.
Based on my personal experience, having a partner/co-founder can take a lot of stress in starting up
“Great Ideas Derive from Well-Rested Minds”: http://bit.ly/dptAB3 93-minute video by DHH — they built Basecamp working on it 10-hours per week).
So the secret is to no have children and wife. I’m on the right.
Great article. Reiterating what many people said here: as if I’m reading about myself.
Keep up the good work.